1957 wasn't a Leap Year, and it wasn't the Year of the Frog (there
is no Year of the Frog in the Chinese calendar). But you might
call it the Year of the Leap Frog, since 1957 was the year that
the Soviet Union responded to a streak of 20th century American
technological successes, which culminated powerfully in the weaponization
of nuclear forces - in 1945 with plutonium, and in 1952 with
hydrogen. How did the Russians respond? By conquering the force
of gravity with the launch of Sputnik.

We leapt back in front with
Apollo in 1969, but since we currently rely on the Russians for
a ride back home from the International Space Station in an emergency,
you could argue that they're back in front again. A manned mission
to Mars would be impressive, but it would be a foolish endeavor
while taxpayers are busy bailing-out large sinking sectors of
our economy.

RAGS co-author Dick
Zare, Professor and Chair of Chemistry at Stanford
University, rang alarm bells about science and math education
during a
plenary event at the Southeastern Regional Meeting of the American
Chemical
Society in Nashville, Tennessee.
Photo by P. J. MacDougall.

It's time for a change - a big change. Instead of racing Russia
to the red planet, we should focus on Finland. Why Finland? Because
while we were busy playing leap frog with the Russians - and
let's admit it, it wasn't about astro-physics, it was mostly
about geo-politics - the Finns became the most economically competitive
country in the world in 2004, and retained that title in 2005.

In 2007, the U.S. regained
the title of most economically
competitive, and held onto it this year, but the sub-prime
crisis will likely scramble such rankings along with global economies.
But, no matter what happens to our economy, or theirs, we will
be playing catch-up with the Finns. That's because, according
to PISA, the Programme
for International Student Assessment, 15-year-old students
in Finland rank at the top of the world in scientific problem-solving
proficiency, and in mathematics they are tied for the lead with
Chinese and Korean students.

Splitting the atom and breaking
the bonds of gravity were technically very challenging, and wouldn't
have been possible without creative innovations in science and
engineering - but throwing money at the problem helped a lot.

When it comes to economic
challenges, however, throwing money at the problem always makes
things worse in the short term, and may make things much
worse in the long term. It all depends on where you throw
it.

Finland seems to know where
to throw it, since they achieved their envied PISA ranking with
middle-of-the-pack per-pupil spending.

If we assume that Finland's
surge in economic competitiveness (which is largely based on
their high-tech sector) is correlated with the learning power
of PISA success in math and scientific problem-solving, then
we can at least identify where our next "surge"
needs to be. It needs to be in math classrooms and science laboratories
all across the country.

I am very thankful that an
impressive team of American thinkers has thought about this problem.
Made up from members of the National Academies of Engineering
and the Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine, this team is
called the Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the
21st Century. After collecting massive amounts of data from around
the world, they issued a report entitled "Rising
Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for
a Brighter Economic Future", or RAGS for short. This
report concluded with a set of twenty recommendations for Congress.
Some involve how children are taught math and science, but also
others call for incentives to encourage students to become not
just mathematicians and scientists, but also math and science
teachers.

Interest in this report is
not limited to Congress, nor should it be. State legislatures
will play a major role in reshaping science and math education.
And just like post-Sputnik, concerned citizens will provide most
of the energy.

I found this to be the case
when I was recently invited to relay an overview
of RAGS to the Nashville
Women's Breakfast Club, and one of the senior editors of
The Tennessean was enjoying fruit salad and scrambled eggs while
I described test scores and scrambled economies. I must have
done a pretty good Sputnik imitation because the following Sunday,
above the fold on the front page of The Tennessean, hovering
over a story about the (then) undefeated Titans, was the gleaming
headline "Science
gets short shrift".

Midnight Sun celebrations are
a great midsummer tradition in Finland, but eternal optimism
is continuously celebrated in the United States.

Preston MacDougall
is a chemistry professor at Middle Tennessee State University.
His "Chemical Eye" commentaries are featured in the
Arts and Public Affairs portion of the Nashville/Murfreesboro
NPR station WMOT (www.wmot.org).